


Souvenirs

by aurora_australis



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, MFMM Year of Quotes, Post-War, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_australis/pseuds/aurora_australis
Summary: Jack Robinson returns to Melbourne. Again.





	Souvenirs

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the MFMM Year of Quotes -- April Challenge.
> 
> Inspired by the quote: “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – _A Hat Full of Sky _, Terry Pratchett__
> 
> Many many thanks to Fire_Sign for the truly excellent beta read.

When Jack Robinson was a boy he had a dog named Cody, who followed him everywhere. And whenever Cody returned home with Jack from one of their adventures, he inevitably brought a souvenir with him. It didn’t matter where they went or what the weather, somehow Cody always returned with a record of their activities. Usually it was mud, tracked in via paw print, but he had also been known to return with sprigs of foliage, bits of rubbish he found interesting, and even laundry off the line of an unsuspecting neighbor. Jack’s eternally exasperated mother used to call him “the Souvenirer,” because he seemed determined to keep a reminder of each foray into the wide world, at least for as long as it took Jack’s mother to hand her son a broom and dustpan or send him back out with the now unclean laundry.

When Jack returned to Melbourne in 1919, he felt like Cody.

Even after days at home, and countless baths, he could still feel the mud. Knew he’d tracked it back with him, even if he looked clean. How could he not? He’d lived in it for four years. He’d breathed it in, absorbed it through osmosis. It was still there. It would always be there. He’d brought the War home with him. And it made everything around him uglier.

Rosie tried to reassure him. She told him nothing had changed. Nothing had to change. They could pick up right where they’d left off. But that was a lie. He knew it, even if she did not. He was changed. Melbourne was changed. It had less color. Perhaps the mud had permanently clouded his vision as well. Even Rosie was changed, if she would be honest with herself, though in the interest of self-preservation she rarely was.

Jack tried though. He tried _so hard_ to shake the memories, lose the mementos of battle and blood and bitterness that he had never intended to collect. He mainly tried through work, though occasionally he tried through a bottle. Neither was very successful, but the former left him less hungover than the later and so he mostly opted for that.

Sometimes he tried through his wife. He tried to have normal conversations with her, the kind he imagined the man he should have become would have had. He tried to pretend he still enjoyed watching summer thunderstorms together, even though now the sound of thunder made his chest hurt. When he returned home from work each night he tried to enjoy the meals she prepared for him, though that had not been an easy feat even before the War, and the consistency of that small detail did sometimes make him smile. But the feeling always faded. Because he knew. He knew when Rosie looked at him, really looked at him, she could see what he had done over there, and the man he had allowed himself to become. Clear as the marks Cody had left on the kitchen floor. And when he touched her, made love to her, he saw them too. Saw his actions like fingerprints. He’d brought the War home. And worst of all, he had brought it back to sully her. Rosie, who was more precious to him than anything. Jack was wary to get too close after he realized that; he didn’t want to leave a mark. 

But time passed, as time is wont to do, and as any policeman can tell you, evidence always degrades over time.

So the mud, as it is wont to do, dissipated. It was no longer so concentrated that it clouded his vision or ruined the psychological furniture. He might never be rid of it completely, but he could live with the small bit that remained. He could live with the man he had become. Still, he decided it was probably best not to leave Melbourne again, lest he track back anything else - he could live without those souvenirs.

And then, five words. 

“Come after me, Jack Robinson.”

When Jack returned to Melbourne in 1930, he felt different.

The trunk he gathered at the port held his clothes, books, and some knick knacks he had picked up along the way. But he had more precious souvenirs this time.

Travelling with Phryne was a revelation. Not just because she knew so much, or pushed him out of his comfort zone so often, or took every opportunity to just enjoy life (although all of those were certainly true), but because with her he discovered the joy that could be found in bringing the world home to Melbourne.

Once, when they were nowhere near their destination, turned around in the alleys and canals of Venice, he had grumbled rather grumpily something about wishing for a map, and Phryne had just looked at him and said, “Oh Jack, don’t you know? I’d rather be lost with you than found with anyone else.” Before he’d kissed her in response (because there really was no other reponse), Jack had boxed up that moment, packed it away carefully in his heart. His first souvenir of the trip.

He collected many others on his journey.

On the voyage home, Phryne discovered her sea legs quickly, but, surprising neither of them, Jack took longer to find his footing. Unable to sleep, he developed the habit of wandering the decks late at night. His first evening at sea he had stared at the sky and been confronted by constellations he thought he’d left behind forever, brighter now that there were no city lights to obscure them. He’d loathed those stars a decade ago. Tonight they just seemed vaguely unfamiliar. He looked for patterns in the sky he had seen with different eyes, and almost immediately spotted Canes Venatici. He recalled it was one of the newer constellations, which still meant more than 200 years, but by astronomical terms it was practically modern. He smiled, deciding Phryne would approve. Jack thought it was probably appropriate that after so many years of avoidance it would be the hunting dogs who found him. Or perhaps he was finding himself.

Docked in Port Said, he and Phryne had discovered late that the cafe where they had stopped for lunch employed communal tables. After a brief, wordless conversation, they decided to stay and in the end they spent a very enjoyable afternoon chatting amiably with an Egyptian shopkeeper, a Greek photographer, and an Italian architect who were sat near them. As he sipped his tea and considered dessert, Jack noticed that no one was in the least surprised by their little grouping, and had a brief, bright flash of hope for the future. As well as a sudden craving for whatever the shopkeeper had just ordered.

Eventually, he grew accustomed to sleeping through both ocean swells and flailing limbs. But some nights he still walked the decks just because he could, and so he watched as unfamiliar constellations slowly became his own. He marveled that he could feel so connected to something so far away. And he still regretted the telescope line.

Once, holding Phyrne’s hand in Bombay, he had stared into the eyes of the huge stone elephant at the entrance to the Victoria Gardens. Her hand was warm, and the midday sun was warm, and his heart was warm, and as he stared he couldn’t help thinking what a miracle it was that for years after the War he had cursed his exceptional memory but today, surrounded by wonders both colorful and Collingwood, he was glad that there were things he would never forget. 

These souvenirs, he would cherish.

Yes, the world had ugliness and pain and sorrow. And yes, he had brought some of that back with him the first time. But it also had light and music and magic and love. And this time he had brought that back too. It was there in the way he could appreciate setting off on his push bike with no map or destination, but still know he was where he should be. It was there in the way he began reading Rilke again in the original German for the first time since his troop ship had set sail in 1914. It was there in his late night walks along the foreshore, when he felt closest to the stars. And it was there in the way he now sought out new foods, trying authentic cuisine from locations around the globe. Sometimes he explored these culinary delights with Phryne or Jane, but he was also happy to go on his own. Sometimes he was accompanied by Mr. Butler on “fact finding missions.” To everyone’s surprise, he became a regular in several Chinatown eateries. And he was quite good with chopsticks now, thank you very much.

When he met Rosie for tea a few weeks after his return, she noted that travel seemed to agree with him. He told her, for the first time since 1919, Melbourne agreed with him. She seemed slightly confused by his response, but happy for him all the same. 

When Jack returned the first time, all he could glean of his time out in the world was how very small he was. And that was still true. But it was only half the story. Returning this time, he still felt small, but now he knew the rest. The most important lesson of his travels: he was a part of the world. A small part, but he belonged. And he brought that sense of peace back to Melbourne.

He decided it was time to get another dog.

And when, five years later, he and Phryne departed on their next big adventure, he knew he would once again return to a different Melbourne than the one he was leaving. Because he would be different. 

And Jack felt free.


End file.
